Temples rolled into Kansas City to play an in-store at Mills Record Company and people were lined around the block to see the band in action. The band mostly played material off of their new album Volcano which comes out in March. They also stuck around after the performance to meet their fans and sign poster and albums. Here is what I documented.

I traveled over to St. Louis for the weekend to see what LouFest was all about. I had seen quite a few of these acts fairly recently but for whatever reason every time LCD Soundsystem has been around I have missed them other than catching a few songs back in 2007. So a couple of us drove across Missouri to see what LouFest was all about. Drinking beer and listening to live music in 80 degree weather isn't a terrible way to spend the weekend. Here are all of the acts that I caught. (click on images for full screen view)

This ghost town is located near the Kansas/Oklahoma border was dis-incoporated as a town in September of 2009. This was due to cave-in risks of local structures and groundwater contamination caused by years and years of lead and zinc mining. These are a few photos from what is left of this decaying town.

I loved being able to get out and capture images in such a lively city. While visiting friends this weekend I made it out to the Chinatown, Wicker Park, and Ukrainian Village neighborhoods. I'm also a sucker for the train so of course I had to get a few quick flicks on the tracks as well.

Last year was the first year that the Folk Alliance International Conference was held in Kansas City and it was a hell of a time. I'm lucky enough to get to cover the conference again this year and after night one it looks like it's going to be another kick ass weekend of music and good times. These are the photos that I capture on night one of FAI2015.

Typically when I photograph a concert I end up taking a lot of shots. I'm hoping that not only did I compose the shot properly but there are other elements that come into play as well. Such as, did the always changing light blow the exposure, did the performer end up with a goofy face, and other things a little less controllable than I'd like. For this particular show I ended up with quite a few extra shots that I liked so I figured that I would post them here so that they weren't completely for nothing.

These were taken at the Sprint Center in Kansas City on December 21, 2014. I like shooting here when there aren't any restrictions which was the case with this show. Pretty typical rules, first 3 songs and no flash. Easy enough. Many times with larger acts the rules are a lot stricter and so I was a little surprised that I didn't have to sign some sort of agreement about how I could use the photos. That was refreshing. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the images that I'm posting here and you can see the rest of the images posted at pitch.com.

I've decided to be a little bit more active in photographing people around Kansas City that I think are interesting. So I was wasting time on Facebook a few weeks back like most people do and I noticed this guy in some of my friend's pictures. He was a really cool, interesting looking older gentleman that I hadn't seen around town before. So I shot my friend a message and a couple of days later he responded "Hey Zach! Yes, I'm sure the Blind Guy would love to have a portrait done." The message confused me a bit because I couldn't tell if my friend was being sarcastic or if he was serious. Turns out that he was serious and that the guy that I wanted to photograph likes to go by Blind Guy. I didn't know that Jim a.k.a. Blind Guy was in fact blind, when I asked my friend Mark if he may be interested in taking some portraits.

Fast forward to a week later and I met up with Blind Guy and went to his apartment to take some photos. Over the course of the day we talked and he told me the story of how he lost his sight during surgery back in 1997 as well as many other stories. He is as interesting of a person as his wild fashion sense would indicate. Anyways, here are some of the portraits that we took that afternoon.

I took a little trip down to Memphis for a few days and I must say that I came away quite impressed. I had never been before and found that there were plenty of things to do down there with plenty of opportunities for some interesting photos.

Over the past few days I covered the Folk Alliance International Conference that was held here in Kansas City, MO. I attended three days of the conference and during that time I saw former Vice President Al Gore talk speak on climate change, dozens and dozens of bands from all over, and many interesting people that filled the Westin Hotel. I decided to put together a collection of images from this conference that I felt represented the happenings of the weekend.